


Switch

by princessgeorge



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M, The Desert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:53:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1400428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessgeorge/pseuds/princessgeorge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mindy and Danny somehow have to, you know, sit on the plane as it lands, and get a taxi home from the airport. While wanting to make out some more. It's a difficult thing to do. And where are they going in that taxi? That is an excellent question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Switch

**Author's Note:**

> Starts at the end of The Desert. Based on promos I’ve seen, this is not spoilery. It's also an excellent encapsulation of why I don't write for a sitcom. Diaphenia and Rikyl were extremely gorgeous and talented beta readers at very short notice.

_Ding._

_This is your captain speaking. We’re beginning our approach to LaGuardia. Your flight attendants will be coming through the cabins to collect any items to dispose of so please get your trash ready for them…_   

Wow. So, first of all, that email took longer than she’d thought, if they’re almost landing. _That email…_ It seems like a million years ago. And it seems like something that has nothing to do with right now. Is she a terrible person for not caring about that email right now? Because she doesn’t.

She _super_ doesn’t. 

But, second of all, wow, exactly how long had they been making out back here?

It’s not like they stop right away once the PA system kicks in. Sure, they slow down, his hand under her shirt up to her shoulder blade, and hers just starting to untuck his t-shirt in the front. Dammit. She hooks a finger into his belt loop as he slides his hand back down to her waist. Their kiss gets shallower and shallower until they are pressing their foreheads together. 

The flight attendants must be starting from the other end of the plane. Either that or they didn’t want to deal with two grown-ups acting like Justin Bieber and some Brazilian underwear model in the back galley.

Seriously. They’re panting. She and Danny Castellano are panting together in the back galley of an airplane. Much as she’d like to think they look all hot and sexy and glowing, they probably look red-faced and ridiculous.  She opens her eyes. He doesn’t look that ridiculous. A bit sweaty, maybe, but mostly, just… _damn_. 

She remembers those baseball movies that always star Kevin Costner back when he was hot (not young and hot, he was already too old for that, but, still, hot, especially when he’s painting Susan Sarandon’s toenails in bed, mrawr), anyhow, they have a scene where for some stupid reason they’re trying to play baseball at night, and they have to turn on the lights, and someone throws this big switch, and ka-thunk! and there’s a kind of hum, and ka-blam! the lights go on?

Well, her switch got thrown. She’s a goddamn baseball field in the night, thrumming with electricity.

He’s got one hand around her head, in her hair, and she leans against it just a little, eyes closed, before they both take a big breath, and she nods and he nods, and they start to head back. 

The lights are back up in the cabin now. He stays close behind her as they go back to their seats, which, honestly, given what must still be going on for him in his pants, which, she now knows, is a fair bit, is probably just as well. Everyone’s in that pre-landing bustle, taking off sleep masks and blinking in the brightness, finding their earbuds, putting their unread books back in their bags, scarfing down the last of their almonds.

OK, they can totally act like normal people. They sit down, they bustle. 

The flight attendant gets to them just as they are buckling their seatbelts.

“How long until we land?” Danny clears his throat to ask her. 

“Not long. About ten minutes.”

When the flight attendant moves on, Danny mutters, “that still seems like a long time.” 

“It sure does.” She can’t help the note of frustration that dominates her voice.

He chuckles, and gives her a lopsided grin. He looks almost exhilarated. “Something bothering you, ma’am?” 

“Well, maybe _someone_ was bothering me a bit…” She tries to look annoyed but she can see it’s not working.

He’s smiling at her, but it fades suddenly. “Mindy, we…” 

She cuts him off. “Yeah, yeah, we have to talk. I know. We do.” She looks seriously at him. “But not yet, OK? Can’t we just…”

He raises an eyebrow. “Just what?” Not sternly, not lecturing. Is he teasing? 

“I don’t know. Just… let this,” she waves her hand around in a circle to indicate _This insane making out and hopefully some more of it_ “for a while? Then we’ll be all responsible… later.”

Smooth, Mindy Lahiri, MD, torn between two lovers. Less fun than it sounds right this second.

“That’s what you want?” Not teasing now. “Even with…” he gestures to her bag, meaning the laptop, meaning the email.

“Yup. Yes. Yes, it is.” Ignoring that for a while seems like a _great_ idea. “I mean, if that’s what you…” 

Now he cuts her off. “Yes.”

The landing is pretty quick after all, with no bumps. Danny doesn’t grab her hand, but their knees and shoulders press together.

Maybe not so torn, after all. 

 

***

She hadn’t realized how long someone could smolder. She’d have expected him to look smug, like he’d won a bet, but he didn’t. Not at all.

At the airport, under the bright lights and in the crowds he’s efficient, helpful, lifts her suitcase from the conveyor with barely a huff, lets her get onto the escalator first, gets them into a taxi. Familiar, yet completely different.

Didn’t he always do that, when they would cross the street or whatever? Was it always like this, though? Now everything is so sexually charged.

And the way he shoots looks at her, it’s the same for him.

He puts a hand on her back as they walk through the crowd, and she practically jumps out of her skin.

In the taxi, the driver says “where to?” Danny stops and looks at her, no smoldering now, just a question all over his face. Holding his gaze, she gives an address.

Not her address.

His address.

He looks at her with some relief, like they’ve settled something, and sits back as the car pulls away. It occurs to her that she didn't want to go to her place because there might be some stuff of Cliff's there, maybe even... oh god, no, Cliff himself wouldn't be there? She pushes that thought away very, very firmly. _Tomorrow._

It’s more like a limo than a taxi, with those molded seats, not a flat bench. No more knees pressing together. She glances over at him, but he’s looking out the window, a faint smile playing on his face.

Feeling suddenly discombobulated, she looks out the window at the familiar sights of the city – the highways so very different from those in LA, older-seeming, more weathered, a little less open and smooth. They’re back home. Just like before. Right?

She realizes he’s sliding his hand into hers; his fingers slip up her wrist, just inside her sleeve, with this slight movement caressing her. It’s not precisely hand-holding.

Like everything else they’ve been doing since that kiss, it’s foreplay. 

She gasps audibly, and can feel his look, says, “Shut up,” and looks out the window, trying and failing not to smile too much.

That’s the way it is all the way into Manhattan, their hands touching, his fingers on her pulse, inside her clothes just slightly, slipped into her sleeve just an inch or two, but not nearly enough. 

By the time they’re over the bridge, past the tolls, he’s switched hands, so he can put his other hand on her knee, then moving to her thigh. He’s still looking out the window.

She looks down at his hand on her leg. His fingers are steady, sure. That’s a strong hand, right there. That’s a hand that can do things.

She can hear the buzz inside her head. It feels like Danny should be able to hear it.  Forget that, she feels like the driver should be able to hear it. She feels like the people they’re passing now on the streets of Manhattan, walking past the still-open bodegas and locked-up-tight dry cleaners and Duane Reades and Au Bon Pains, should be able to hear it.

She rests her head on her elbow, propped on the window. She closes her eyes and tries to remember how to breathe.

 

***

In the elevator at his place, someone gets in with them despite the late hour (hello, New York!) and presses the button to a higher floor. She looks down, just waiting, waiting. She can totally do this. Just a colleague coming back from a business trip with another colleague. And she’s going to his place because…. Well, why not?

Danny slides his hand over like he’s going to put his arm around her, but instead his fingers slip over the back of her head, inside her collar – they’re cool against her hot skin. When she looks up, he’s looking at her. Smoldering again. 

They barely make it to the bed. They do make it into his apartment, but that’s only because when they start kissing it’s after he’s unlocked the door. It would be nice if it had been this romantic moment but really it’s just he grabs and she grabs and then he’s pressed up against her in the doorframe, and they just pick up where they left off in the back of the plane and she’s pulling off his jacket before he hauls their suitcases inside and lets them crash into a heap.

But they do make it to the bed, and thank god for that, because she’s starting to lose the ability to stand upright. Danny isn’t much better, though; there’s a lot of staggering. They bump into things, and knock a few things over, and she doesn’t know what because they don’t stop locking lips, but, hey, it’s not her place, so whatever. She guesses none of it is his precious Springsteen memorabilia, because Danny doesn’t pay any attention.

It’s not graceful. What it is, is hot.

There’s a moment when he’s standing more or less at her feet, because he’s just reached up and pulled down her jeans along with her underwear and her socks went along for the ride, and she realizes that she’s let him get her naked with the streetlight coming in through the slats in the blinds, and normally this would be verboten, certainly on a first… whatever this is.

But he just looks at her once like he’s about to dig into the most delicious sub, and launches himself back at her, and it occurs to her that there’s some upside to this whole idea that he’s already seen her naked, and in much less flattering lighting. Plus, whatever, clearly he’s into it. Week-old Brazilian and all.

Finally, after he makes her come, he looks at bit smug. But she figures that’s OK. He’s earned it. Boy howdy has he.

 

*** 

She’s trapped.

He’s asleep, with a leg thrown over both of hers, and she needs to pee. She realizes that, for all the things she knows about Danny, she doesn’t know what kind of a sleeper he is. He’s not one of those guys who’s always snoring in a corner of the doctor’s lounge.

Well it’s getting desperate. She’s gonna have to risk it. Silently apologizing to possibly-hypothetically-light-sleeper-Danny she carefully slips out from underneath him.

She wakes up, goes into the bathroom, looks at his things there. Touches a bottle of something or other, opens one to take a sniff. Thinks that she’s been in there before, but now it feels so much more intimate. It’s different now that she’s smelled (and tasted, oh my god) these things on his body.

She goes back into the bedroom, looks at him sleeping there. He’s shifted a little since she got out of bed—now he’s completely flopped out on his stomach, sprawling into the space she’s left behind. She’s going to have to nudge him a bit when she gets back in that bed. Which is an inviting prospect, but first she’s going to enjoy the view just for a moment or two.

Seriously, look at those fucking shoulders. Wait, are those bite marks? Whoops.

There’s that idea that usually the sex isn’t that good the first time. And yeah, there’s some truth to it. There can be those awkward moments when you just don’t feel all that comfortable, or, worse, once you take off the clothes and get to it there’s no chemistry.

 _Not_ the case here. Sure, there are probably some things that familiarity can improve upon, but, really, this first-time sex with Danny is right up there. He’s already top three on technical merit alone. That dancing training really shows up when it counts.

And there’s this highly gratifying combination of enthusiasm and seriousness that suggests it would only get better.

When that big baseball field switch is thrown, in the movies, it lights everything up. It makes nighttime as clear as midday. But she doesn’t need that right now. With the half-light in the room, she sees Danny clearly. She knows him.

They’ll talk tomorrow, but at least she knows what she’s going to say.

She smiles, and slides into bed next to him as their city glows and hums outside.

 


End file.
